How do I include HTML in a JS Rails response?
I have a FooController that responds to HTML and JS (AJAX) queries:
# app/controllers/foo_controller.rb:
class FooController < ApplicationController
layout 'foo'
def bar
respond_to do |format|
format.html # foo/bar.html.erb
format.js # foo/bar.js.erb
end
end
end
The templates to support it:
# app/views/layouts/foo.html.erb:
<html>...<%= yield %>...</html>
# app/views/layouts/foo.json.erb:
<%= yield %>
And an AJAX template in which I want to render a partial:
# app/views/foo/bar.js.erb:
dojo.byID('some_div').innerHTML = "<%= escape_javascript(render(:partial => 'some/partial')) %>";
If the JS template just has plain old JS in it (like alert('hi');), it uses my JS template. When I put in the render(:partial), though, it makes the whole response use the HTML template, which means it's no longer valid JS.
A possible solution is to use a function for the layout:
class FooController < ApplicationController
layout :choose_layout
...
private
def choose_layout
return nil if request.xhr?
'foo'
end
end
But my version should work! Why doesn't it?
Answer
The most recent Railscast covers this topic (using jQuery).
I'm not quite seeing where you might be going wrong, but here's a snippit from the Railscast that works just fine to render a partial:
// views/reviews/create.js.erb
$("#new_review").before('<div id="flash_notice"><%= escape_javascript(flash.delete(:notice)) %></div>');
$("#reviews_count").html("<%= pluralize(@review.product.reviews.count, 'Review') %>");
$("#reviews").append("<%= escape_javascript(render(:partial => @review)) %>");
$("#new_review")[0].reset();
Where are you storing your Javascript? Do you have an Application.js that you're keeping things in? If so, are you including "dojo" before "application" in your javascript_include_tag?